It is so tempting and somewhat expected
To measure a year in numbers.
Twelve months, twelve thousand
More dollars in a bank.
Today, eight months since spring.
In Colorado, only one inch of rain
Since July.
How many trees lost to fires?
I can’t count how many prayers.
Next year I will have three hundred and sixty-five days.
And I don’t intend on wasting
Any single one of them.
Dec 16, 2020
Dec 16, 2020 at 4:06 PM UTC
How devastating the quiet was
Without your paws pawing
Beneath my door
So excited to hear me snoring
So thrilled to belong to me
And I to you, friend.
So very quiet.
Oct 26, 2020
Oct 26, 2020 at 10:49 PM UTC
We made a game out of it
clapping mosquitos between our palms
while we sat on a blanket
in the middle of, honestly,
their house, covered in grass and dew.
And we quoted, I'm sure a very smart scientist
who said that they could be eradicated—
all of them
those tiny things with
black and white striped legs
and long thirsty throats—
without any significant damage done.
If that is the standard
for whether a thing should exist
or whether it shouldn't,
I pray no big and great thing
notices us, melting entire continents and
setting entire countries on fire.
Sep 11, 2020
Sep 11, 2020 at 9:45 PM UTC
We met you in the morning
Two miles up the mountain’s spine.
All broad and beautiful,
Full of intent, and of blackberries.
Before I knew it not three yards stood between us.
My two legs together were smaller than just one
Of your outstretched arms, reaching
For something sweet in the bushes. Quite like us, I think.
“Black bear” is the word we used.
You sauntered off, smelling of musk and honey,
Your child, all fluff and fight, in tow,
Probably entirely not knowing
That you were the miracle of the day.
Sep 9, 2020
Sep 9, 2020 at 11:07 PM UTC
I like the way my father talks about trees. Introducing me to the one across the street from the new house—"This one's a sycamore, and I'd say it's doing a **** good job at it." It'd be a cliché to say he thinks of them as his friends, which he doesn't. But it wouldn't be overdone to say that he knows them as if they were, which he does.
Mar 25, 2020
Mar 25, 2020 at 2:21 PM UTC
have the snails,
the owls,
the quiet and sleepy groundhogs
ever once complained
about something as wonderful
as the rain
Feb 23, 2020
Feb 23, 2020 at 1:38 PM UTC
It's a cliché, almost,
daffodils springing out of snow.
But does that mean that
it's not worth noticing,
maybe even marveling at?
Feb 9, 2020
Feb 9, 2020 at 9:40 AM UTC
There's a bird that sings
at 5 o'clock on any given evening
where the sun happens to be out.
He sits in the crepe myrtle out front,
so excited and boisterously
announcing yet another sunset—thank goodness.
I wish I knew just how to thank him.
I do not think that he'd appreciate a poem
as much as I would.
Then again, I could be wrong—
I usually am.
Jan 15, 2020
Jan 15, 2020 at 2:25 PM UTC
I told you a year ago
while we were buried somewhere
in the mountains, I'm not sure which ones,
that I believe in magic
and you didn't say so but
I think you silently agreed—
how could you not?
You too watched the sun climb from behind
the mountains overlooking us,
and heard how joyously the birds sang when it did.
Dec 17, 2019
Dec 17, 2019 at 6:35 PM UTC
I've spent hours, probably,
strolling the same streets,
walking the same trails seeing
just house quiet my feet
can possibly be on three inches
of dried up leaves,
wondering what the doves,
what the wrens are saying
so loudly, so charismatically to each other
and it's a wonder that
one hasn't said to me
"why do you need to know
what it is that we're saying,
is it not enough to know that
we're saying it at all?"
Dec 9, 2019
Dec 9, 2019 at 7:46 PM UTC